Dr Eleni Skoura-Kirk explores how the language used by policy-makers in constructing policy problems directly influences the solutions created. Looking at the responses of Greece and the UK to the Covid-19 pandemic, Eleni discovers that discourse prevailing discourses around the elderly often depicted them as ‘frail, dependent, a ‘burden’ on social resources,’ she says:
“The ‘othering’ and invisibility of older people in public discourse has had dire consequences in the ongoing Covid-19 crisis in the UK: care homes remained obscured from the government’s gaze…”
This is in direct contrast to the Greek response where the Greek Chief Scientist Dr Tsiodras explained that his recommended response was on the basis of respect for ‘everybody’. Regardless of age. At the time of writing, the handling of the pandemic in Greece is described as a ‘surprising success story’ with fewer than 200 deaths.
Read the full article in the Social Work 2020 under Covid-19 Magazine.
Dr Eleni Skoura-Kirk is a Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Kent. Dr Skoura-Kirk’s research interests relate to homelessness and service user and carer involvement in social work education. Dr Skoura-Kirk is interested in qualitative methods, with a focus on discourse analysis and narrative approaches to research. She is currently examining the way in which social work students’ discourses might develop or shift after service user and carer input in the classroom.